Big Blue Disk - DOS Nostalgia

Today I take a look at an IBM PC diskmag "Big Blue Disk". Published from 1986 to 1998, it was known for its variety in software it had to offer, and many games. When it came to games this diskmag had ties to many pc gaming legends, including Moraffware, Apogee, and id Software.
Enjoy this slice of PC software history!

Check out the DOS Nostalgia Podcast:

[tejaswoman]

Bless you! My mom and I loved big blue disc so much back in the 1980s. We would pore over every issue. Knowing they are accessible through internet archive makes my night. Thank you for this trip down memory lane.

[EINSTEINLESSISME]

I worked for one of these “Soft-mag”companies (1988 – 1990?). The company was Viking Tech. Located in Newport RI. The magazine was called “Up-time” - It was very much like “Big Blue Disk”. They had several products; MS-DOS, Apple, Commodore, & Mac). I worked as a network administrator, (My official title was “Director of Managements Information Systems”). I allays found this to be a bit pertensious. We had a Novel Server with 6? terminals running a dBASE database for subscriber information. The last thing I did for the company was to archive the customer database that they sold to “Big Blue Disk”. It was my first job working with computers – and it was a blast!

[harshbarj]

I remember Big Blue Disk well. As a kid, I waited each month for the disk to arrive. I really loved the Catacomb series. They played well on our Tandy 4016dx (386DX with 4mb ram). In some ways I miss the old days, and in others I am glad they are gone. With progress you gain some and you lose some. But at least we can keep the old computers around and explore the past.

[DavidXNewton]

Thanks for contributing all of these to the archive :) I never had these growing up (I doubt they made their way outside America) and it's interesting to see the very early genesis of id Software. (And their activities are basically why we software developers now have "you can only do company work on company machines" written into our contracts now...)

[danmanx]

I need to find my old softdisk 3 1/2 disk. I had one of them. I loved these things too. They always had such fascinating software on them.

[Darthhelmet]

I was going to post asking if this material had been preserved in any way online and then the video ends and answers my question for me. Another wonderful video and its great to see that so much if not all of this bit of history is preserved for today's and future generations to look into.

[LastofAvari]

Oh, yeah. Electronic/disk magazines were quite an exciting stuff to enjoy back then. I remember having read some for ZX Spectrum in the 90's

[NihilQuest]

And that's how I learned the word lagniappe as well - by watching this video.

[michaelogara]

Very cool. My family growing up had copies of specific editions on 3.25 disks for our Tandy 1000. Issue 36 with Ramero's ZappaRoidz was a particular favorite. Remember you could just run "zappa" from the command line to get straight into the game.

[schmootheonly]

Sweet!! I know how I'm spending my afternoon

[chrislemery]

I remember laughing til we cried when we saw "Alfredo's Lost Cause" on one of our demo disks..

[amandakelly]

back in the 90's i used to make my own mags known as emags back then....coded in c++ or turbal pascal ahh good old dos days. Can still be found online too

[thecdchannel]

I recognize the composer from 2:08. It's DRAX-style. Maniacs of Noise. Thomas Mogensen probably.

[Danielau]

Did you upload these to the Internet Archive, or did someone else?

[LeonardGr]

which disc that animation on 5:12 came from?

[billcarson]

wow, still publishing up until 1998 and they were on floppy disk the whole time? no switch to cd-rom?

[olpappers]

Aaaa!

I remember the fuck out of these! I didn't have them all growing up obviously, but still.

Which one is "Pac-Man" on?

[nukecoke]

lagniappe
laˈnjap/
noun NORTH AMERICAN
something given as a bonus or gratuity.